#but that's just my perception based on content i see now in 2024

[halflingkima]

the brosca warden storyline is insane (affectionate) to me, and it's wild that I happened to choose it first.

I've not played through all the origins myself, but from what I gather in general, I think brosca has the least material effect on later material gameplay – all of the effect is in brosca's character choices/response, which is completely up to the player whether or not/how much to honor.

the 'dwarf commoner' origin title is misleading – brosca's casteless, classless, as low class as possible and fighting tooth and nail while being actively pushed lower. accepting the warden offer is the easiest choice in the world (even aside from escaping the dwarven death sentence) because it offers any level of respect as a person.

later, when they return to orzammar with the treaties, the city insists they were never born. there's record of their death: when they joined the grey wardens. according to orzammar, brosca's homeland, their origin – brosca did not exist until they became a grey warden, at which point they were considered deceased.

(on top of the official records at the shaperate, no npcs acknowledge that you're a dwarf, let alone from the city. you can speak – briefly – to your family, but they're the only ones who acknowledge your past. I found it frustrating while playing that the origin didn't affect much, but that affected my own gameplay; brosca's origin makes the political dilemma seem laughably simple.)

and then. when the archdemon is slain, whether or not brosca survives, they're made a paragon, which is akin to a dwarven god. brosca is immortalized in their people's mythology forever – the same people who refused to admit they existed until their legal death. (presumably bhelen minimizes or eradicates the caste system, but whether or not that takes –) the history of the paragon brosca will almost certainly erase their origin as a casteless dwarf. when, arguably, they wouldn't have become a paragon without that history.

[speed-seo]

Why SEO is All About User Experience [UX]: The Truths No One Tells You

If you’re involved in any aspect of digital marketing, no doubt you’ve heard countless tips and tactics for optimizing websites and content “for SEO.” Focus keywords, meta tags, backlinks, site speed...you likely have a grasp of conventional technical SEO best practices. But here’s the little-known truth: While that technical stuff is important, today SEO is ultimately all about crafting amazing user experiences. Surprised? You’re not alone. Many marketers remain fixated on nitty-gritty SEO factors while losing sight of the bigger picture: Your website's user experience IS your SEO strategy now. In this comprehensive guide, I’ll explain why optimizing for compelling user experiences aligns perfectly with optimizing for higher Google rankings in 2024 and beyond. I’ll reveal how seamless site UX directly impacts search ranking factors. I’ll walk through actionable best practices for merging UX design and SEO, supported by true stories from the SEO trenches. By the end, you’ll understand why UX - not keywords - represents the SEO opportunity hiding in plain sight at most organizations. Let’s get started! Why User Experience (UX) is the SEO Opportunity No One Sees Across my 12 years in the SEO game, I’ve witnessed online search evolve radically. Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, ranking was a game of gaming the system. Cramming keywords onto pages. Rows of hidden text. Thousands of junky links from low-quality sites. Doorway pages built only for bots. Remember those days? Search engines definitely do! But in recent years, Google and other search engines have cracked down HARD on shady tactics. Algorithms have grown extremely sophisticated at assessing relevance and quality. The net results? SEO success in 2024 comes not from sneaky tricks, but from satisfying user needs consistently across the entire website experience. But when I talk to teams at many companies still mired in outdated SEO perceptions, they remain laser-focused on technical site factors and content keyword targeting. They’re stuck in the past! They don’t realize that today, search engines interpret nearly EVERY aspect of UI and UX as signals of quality and relevance. That’s why I tell these teams: Want to leapfrog competitors in SEO? Forget keywords. Obsess over site UX! That message is often met with blank stares. Improving site UX sounds time-consuming and intangible. They want quicker wins. But once they see direct examples of how UX impacts SEO, the lights start clicking on. They realize UX optimization offers an enormous opportunity hiding in plain sight. So, in this guide, I want to open YOUR eyes to the powerful but unknown relationship between SEO and UX. I want to show you why optimizing user experience is now the #1 way to rank higher in search...even if you’ve never thought about SEO and UX together before! Let’s get started. Core Web Vitals: Google's Official UX Metrics I know what some of you are thinking: What exactly does user experience (UX) have to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? They seem totally separate! Fair reaction. But in reality, creating excellent UX now directly influences your pages' rankings in Google. Don’t just take my word for it. Google itself recently introduced a set of official metrics called Core Web Vitals that assess real-world UX. And Google has explicitly stated it will incorporate these UX metrics as ranking signals moving forward. In other words, Google now grades your pages’ user experience and SEO together based on these Core Web Vitals: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how quickly the main visual content loads. Affects perceived load speed. First Input Delay (FID): Measures responsiveness when users first click or tap. Affects perceived interactivity. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability as elements shift on-screen. Affects perceived visual quality. By focusing on optimizing Core Web Vitals, you’re directly improving both site UX and SEO in Google’s eyes. It’s a complete 1:1 overlap! So, any lingering notions that UX is unrelated to SEO can be tossed out the window. UX deficiencies will soon translate directly into SEO underperformance...and vice versa. Google is essentially forcing companies to realize: Want high rankings? Provide excellent user experiences! This paradigm shift might seem inconvenient to teams entrenched in legacy SEO workflows. But I believe it’s a very positive change overall. See, while technical SEO certainly has value, user experience has always been the deeper determinant of long-term success. UX and SEO have always gone hand-in-hand. Google is just making this truth painfully explicit now. And that level of transparency will empower brands willing to embrace this new outlook to gain an advantage. So, with that context around Core Web Vitals and Google’s focus on UX, let’s explore specific ways site user experience impacts SEO... UX Elements That Directly Influence SEO Now that Google has codified UX signals into its official ranking algorithm, we have definitive proof that optimizing user experience also optimizes SEO. But you don’t need to just take Google’s word for it. Specific elements of on-site UX have always correlated with higher SEO performance. Let's walk through exactly how site UX and SEO are intertwined: Page Load Speed Faster page loads improve UX by allowing users to access content more quickly. For SEO, fast speeds also signal technical competence to search engines. Slow load times historically correlated with lower mobile rankings. Optimizing page speed through techniques like compression, caching, lazy loading and code minification boosts user experience AND SEO together. Mobile Optimization With growing mobile search usage, providing excellent UX on smartphones is a must. If sites don't adapt, Google penalizes them through lower mobile rankings. Using responsive design, minimizing taps and optimizing forms for "fat finger" input enhances mobile UX. This mobile-readiness also earns SEO rewards. Site Architecture A logical IA with organized navigation helps users easily find desired content. For SEO, a sensible site structure also makes it easier for bots to crawl, index and understand pages in relation to each other. Improving site architecture boosts real world usability AND search engine crawl efficiency simultaneously. Internal Linking Links between related site content enable intuitive user flows. But they also signify relevance to search bots, spreading "link equity" that aids ranking. Crafting contextual internal links that guide users aids SEO by illuminating the connections between pages. Content Quality High-quality content keeps users engaged on-site, directly improving bounce rates and time-on-page - key SEO metrics. Useful, comprehensive content also earns more organic links and social shares which search engines view as signals of trust and authority. So optimizing content for users has compounding SEO benefits. More value and engagement = higher rankings. Anchor Text Anchor text on links describes what users will find when clicking. But it also provides search bots context about page topics and relationships. Content-based anchor text aids both user wayfinding AND search engine understanding of relevance between pages. I could go on, but you get the idea... Nearly every UX factor that improves real visitor satisfaction also signals value to search algorithms. User experience optimization IS on-page SEO today! This intrinsic overlap is why I tell all my clients: Want to supercharge your SEO results? Start with UX! But while the SEO value of UX is clear in theory, what does this look like in practice? Let's go through some real-world examples... Real Examples of UX Improvements Lifting SEO Stepping back from the specifics, here is the simple process I’ve seen work wonders for hundreds of sites: 👍 1. Identify pages with strong SEO potential. You want ones already ranking decently but with room to advance - say bottom of page 1 to top of page 1. These have existing authority and optimization but can still gain ground. 👍 2. Run in-depth UX reviews on those pages. Assess against established UX heuristics and guidelines. Document all issues hurting user success like confusing IA, undefined CTAs, dense text, broken formatting, etc. 👍 3. Address those UX flaws methodically. Assign clear owners and timelines. 👍 4. After UX fixes go live, track SEO KPIs. Compare post-UX-optimization metrics to the previous baseline. When this process is followed diligently, I’ve seen enormous SEO surges again and again from UX lifts alone. Let me share some quick examples: Example 1: Blog Post Page - Issue: Keyword-optimized but lengthy walls of text. No visual hierarchy or formatting. Small text difficult to scan. - Fix: Broke text into subheads, short paragraphs. Added bullet lists and bolded key points. Improved paragraph styling and spacing. - Result: Decreased bounce rate and increased pages per session. Search clicks jumped 20%. Google ranking improved from #8 to #4 within 2 weeks. Example 2: Category Page - Issue: Generic title tags and meta descriptions across all categories like "Products". Slow mobile load speed. - Fix: Created unique, keyword-rich titles and meta for each category. Optimized images and enabled caching to improve mobile speed. - Result: 25% increase in organic traffic within 1 month. Mobile load speed improved from 6+ seconds to sub-2 seconds. Example 3: Product Page - Issue: No product description for context. Technical spec sheet only. Small, cluttered layout on mobile. - Fix: Added helpful product summary section. Enlarged images and CTAs for mobile. Simplified specs into table. - Result: Conversions per session improved 11%. Google rankings increased to top three positions for core product terms. You get the idea right? Even seemingly small UX fixes can catalyze significant SEO gains because every element of user experience feeds into search perception. But here’s a crucial warning: Don’t go overboard! You should optimize pages for users first, not bots. Avoid dramatic rewrites or restructuring solely to chase keywords. That creates a disjointed Frankenstein UX that actually hurts long-term rankings. SEO should flow naturally from a focus on understanding and satisfying user needs across the entire customer journey. That holistic process intrinsically leads to higher rankings. So, if you only take one lesson from this guide, make it this: See every UX optimization not just as a way to immediately boost conversions, but also a way to build your SEO foundations at the same time. By proactively layering in UX and SEO synergy, your site will organically rise in the rankings over time. Common Concerns and Challenges with UX and SEO By this point, I hope I’ve convinced you that optimizing for user experience also optimizes for higher Google rankings. They are two sides of the same coin. However, I realize that strategically aligning UX and technical SEO can present challenges, especially for larger companies. Let's discuss some common concerns: 😶‍🌫️ Concern: Our website is massive. Improving UX across everything would take forever! Response: Totally true. That's why I suggest focusing first on pages that already have decent rankings but still have headroom to advance. Get those quick SEO wins from UX lifts, then tackle other pages in priority order. 😶‍🌫️ Concern: We have separate teams for UX design and SEO. More coordination seems difficult. Response: Yes, adding cross-functional collaboration does take concerted effort. But the enhanced organic visibility is worth breaking down those silos. Start small with regular knowledge sharing meetings to build alignment. 😶‍🌫️ Concern: Our current site design and IA is dictated by other factors. Changing for UX's sake will be disruptive. Response: Approaching large-scale UX initiatives will definitely take care and coordination. Start with smaller low-risk enhancements first. As the SEO value becomes clear, leadership will become more receptive to further optimization. 😶‍🌫️ Concern: Many of our products require complex flows. Dramatically simplifying the UX isn't feasible. Response: Yes, meeting diverse user needs often requires navigating nuanced tradeoffs. Not every experience can be distilled into three easy steps. Do what's possible incrementally while staying true to required functionality. The challenges are real, but none are insurmountable. UX and SEO alignment won't happen overnight. But progress compounds exponentially over time. Those able to overcome organizational inertia will pull ahead. Final Thoughts on UX as the Future SEO Opportunity Alright, we've covered a ton of ground here! Let's wrap up with some key takeaways: - Google now explicitly incorporates UX signals like Core Web Vitals into ranking algorithms. UX is SEO. - Optimizing page speed, site architecture, content quality and more inherently boosts conversions AND rankings in parallel. - Fixing even simple UX flaws on priority pages can spark significant organic visibility gains. Think 20%+ clicks overnight! - Shoot for quick SEO wins first, then tackle broader UX initiatives across the site over time. Momentum builds on itself. - Recognize UX optimization as a long-term SEO investment that boosts performance year after year. So, are you now convinced that focusing on user experience represents the biggest new opportunity in SEO? I hope so! SEO will only get more competitive and nuanced in the years ahead. Google will continue raising the bar on understanding user intent and satisfaction. Brands that internalize UX's decisive impact on rankings will gain a lasting edge. Those still stuck in outdated SEO tactics will fade into obscurity. The choice is yours. Will you seize the massive potential of UX optimization to dominate search rankings in 2024 and beyond? Or will you cling to the past while competitors fly by optimizing for site experience? I think the smart strategy is clear. Let me know if you need any help getting started down the path of UX and SEO nirvana! Read the full article

[galaxy98]

I'll go even further!

I know that I've been fixating on it for months, but Elemental is not only one of my favorite movies, it's also the biggest example of a movie that managed to overcome the odds that were stacked against them by being a sleeper hit.

And it all came down to succeeding the old fashion way: Word of mouth.

Take a look at any article from film analysts that talked about this movie and compare it to now. The consensus surrounding it was skeptical/negative right from the start.

They were predicting that it was going to flop hard on opening day, worse than Pixar's previous outing with Lightyear.

And it's not like the public response was any better.

If it wasn't for the horrible marketing that kept it focused on a gag character--can't even say they're a supporting character because they showed up for these 3 scenes as a set up and punchline--there was this perception that the movie was a "generic hetero romeo and juliet-esque zootopia story" based on the tired old premise of "What if X had feelings". There was also the way how they were showing off the animation in the trailers that made people think it wasn't unique.

Not helped that there were 2 movies that were being released around this time that made people feel that their feelings were proven right: Nimona and Across The Spiderverse.

With Nimona, it was obvious. It was a project that almost got shelved by Disney when BluSky was about to close its doors and it was a story that contained explicitly queer and anti-authoritarian themes. So when they look at that and the company's previous involvement in the Don't Say Gay Bill, Elemental became the unfortunate scapegoat in that regard.

With Spiderverse, it was a case of a movie that managed to show off multiple different art styles and on a lower budget compared to Pixar's. Of course, with hindsight being what it is we can confirm that there was more at play, but the point stands. If you show someone who watched ATSV first and then Elemental, they would rather gravitate towards the former because--to them--all the latter has to show for is the character physics on water, cloud, and fire people. That's it.

Which then leads to overall perception people have about Pixar as a whole. The perception that it's no longer the same creative powerhouse when the likes of Lasseter, Docter, Bird, and Stanton were at the helm. Hell! Some people were going around saying that Lasseter should come back even though he had left Disney in disgrace.

Then there were the practices that Disney was doing that ended up damaging the Pixar brand. Now I should stress that with the pandemic being what it is, there were a lot of reasons why they couldn't just release it in theaters. There was no vaccine and we were still trying to figure out how to mitigate COVID. But in doing so they ended up training their audiences to just wait for streaming. There was this growing fear that Pixar was being relegated to "content" instead of something that was worth going out to see in theaters. It only took a couple of bad circumstances for them to reconsider re-releasing Soul, Luca, and Turning Red in 2024.

Another thing that didn't help. They likely played the movie in the wrong environment with the wrong audience, I.E Cannes Film Festival. Which is ironic given the glowing reception it gotten years prior with Inside Out.

So....when you combine all of that, you're left with a movie that has a somewhat so-so reception and also once hold the record for the lowest opening in Pixar's history.

So what exactly happened afterwards?

Well....it kept going.

And going.

More people started watching it and came out of the theater thinking "You know what, that wasn't too bad"

As such they told their friends. And then their friends told their other friends.

Before you know it, the movie managed to hold its own by the second weekend.

In other words...

Elemental--a movie that had all this negativity surrounding it--had legs.

And every time it kept going, people were going around feeling bewildered that it had this much staying power.

By all accounts, it wasn't really an anomaly. But if you were to come up to someone who had a ton of experience in the industry, they would tell you that this is how movies used to succeed.

There wasn't all this concern about how a movie needed to make its budget back right out of the gate. In fact, that was one of the many things Martin Scorsese lamented about regarding the prioritization of the numbers rather than the art.

Film analysts couldn't predict it, box office couldn't predict it, Rotten Tomatoes couldn't predict it, studios couldn't predict it, and not even the public couldn't predict it.

Maybe in comparison to Nimona and Spiderverse, Elemental doesn't have much to show for.

Maybe in comparison to say...the movie Flee, the latter is more poignant because it's centered on a real life immigrant.

But--regardless of all of that--it spoke to a specific audience.

Myself included.

To me, that is the beauty of art.

@matt0044

Do Rotten Tomatoes and Box Office Scores even matter anymore for film analysis? Like does a general score or low return on money indicate low quality?

After Streaming and CO-VID, I'd surprise that films performing below expectations don't have an asterisk beside the reports with a "Not accounting of the still ongoing PLAGUE affecting theaters turn outs."

Plus, we all know that the whole "failed to meet expectations" stuff is a buuuuuuullshit statement made by cowardly executives who worship shareholders at the altar.

[ladystylestores]

Why ‘as-a-service’ models will reign in a post-pandemic world

It’s hard to think ahead when we are up to our necks in the misery and fear of a pandemic, but every CEO should be focused not just on how to survive, but how to thrive in the COVID-era. I say era because this is not a passing phase, but a new reality.

COVID is accelerating many societal and technology shifts and reversing others. The COVID-era is a technology-driven era with widespread and often forced adoption of trends like work-from-home, online retail, pickup/delivery services, entertainment-as-a-service, telemedicine (well, tele-you-name-it), and machine-learning. Embodied in this change are deep behavioral shifts that, even given a decade, might never have reached these proportions. Enabling nearly all of these shifts is an “… as-a-service (XaaS)” capability be it data, infrastructure, platform, software, or experience. XaaS was already on it’s way to becoming a juggernaut, with a market value of $93.8 billion in 2018 and projected to triple to $344.3 billion by 2024, but it’s now on a whole new COVID-triggererd upswing.

These XaaS enabled remote service paradigms are here to stay, maybe not at today’s artificially enforced levels, but to a significant degree all the same. Everyone now knows the perils of work-from-home, but they know the benefits too. As the COVID-era continues to require social distancing for some time, we can’t all go back to the cramped office. And why should we? I hate to see the airline industry in turmoil, but I can’t say that I’ve missed air travel. Now everyone knows just how easy it is to get your groceries or your food delivered, and contactless at that. I miss the big screen, but I’ll settle for great content, 65” TV, and homemade popcorn if I can share the experience with all my friends wherever they are.

But the current change is not just a digital transformation to cloud and consumerized applications, it’s also a behavioral transformation. Forward thinking businesses are seizing this unprecedented opportunity to pause the growth/execution treadmill and imagine a new value/ideation opportunity. Whole teams have been liberated from soul-destroying wash-rinse-repeat cycles and are free to think through new ideas. For better or worse, companies are also leaner and more agile, having been forced to transform their business in order to thrive.

VB Transform 2020 Online – July 15-17. Join leading AI executives: Register for the free livestream.

Adapt both your product and your experience

So, what do CEOs need to re-imagine in their business going forward as we enter a new XaaS powered world? First and foremost the COVID-era is a direct-to-consumer world where you may be literally bringing your offering right into the consumer’s home. For B2B, that means an acceleration of the consumerization of the enterprise and often means a self-serve experience with a consultative sales model. Your offering needs to be consumable over the internet. Not only do your products need to be available as-a-service, but so does your experience. Some call it experience-as-a-service. Paid or free, it’s about helping customers understand how to leverage your offering to meet their own transition. Self-serve models are the most scalable but rely heavily on great product experiences.

In the B2C world, your brand needs to align with the values of your customer and those values have changed. Given the increased and more intimate role that many XaaS businesses are taking, consumers expect brands to have societal responsibilities to ensure their products are delivered fairly and without compromise to any workers. COVID has raised awareness of inequalities and is garnering a movement toward societal fairness. Your brand is everything in a direct-to-consumer model and you need to build trust by investing in the customer experience and delivering value, often without immediate gain. It’s time to un-gate content and extend trials to relieve the pressure in your sale-cycle which is clearly now a buy-cycle with the consumer in control.

Flexibility and agility are paramount for both you and your customer to scale an offering in terms of both demand and supply as each new business waxes or wanes. Clearly, XaaS will help scale the delivery of your product or service up and down, but the economic consumption needs to be flexible too. That means flexible pricing. Annual plans may need to revert back to monthly. Prices may need to depend on consumed metrics. In an ideal world, your pricing might even be pay-for-performance in some form, sharing the risk alongside your customer.

The big picture factors shaping the COVID-economy

While there are of course many different factors at play here, these are the four that are having an immediate impact on the need to adopt XaaS and the business of XaaS itself:

Remote services: The shift to consuming products and services remotely has been dramatic and immediate. Overnight, 80% of healthcare is now delivered as telemedicine, driven by COVID, but enabled by a change in regulations that allow healthcare providers to charge for telemedicine services. All education, from pre-K to post-graduate, shifted to online, globally, practically overnight. CEOs must determine how to consume their products and services over the internet or enabled by it. The winners will be those who can maintain or even build on the social, peer-to-peer experience enjoyed in face-to-face transactions but now delivered online. Think Netflix Party, which turned every viewing experience into the social peer-to-peer interaction that people were craving.

Data science: Artificial intelligence (AI)I, machine learning (ML), and augmented reality (AR) have entered the mainstream conscience. Every day we have been subjected to models and predictions. Everyone has come to understand the critical role of data on a huge scale. The need for testing and contact tracing in the US has raised our perception of the role of AI so that we now understand its potential at a national scale in the same way they do in China. While applications will surely be opt-in, privacy is on the back burner for most, even in Germany. As CEOs innovate on new value propositions, AI, ML, and AR offer some of the most creative ways for CEOs to transform their value proposition to something more consumable over the internet. Think Kinsa digital thermometers, which opened up its aggregated data to track the spread of COVID in your area.

Globalization: With COVID, we have come to understand the perils of globalization. National security is sometimes threatened by critical parts of a supply chain being under foreign control. There is a strong desire to localize key parts of manufacturing into automated and more agile manufacturing pods at home. It may not mean more manufacturing jobs, as robotics and automation will surely play a big role in reducing human skills, but it will mean more jobs up and down the value chain while improving our security. Think Ford and GM, which responded to the urgent need for ventilators by reimagining their manufacturing processes with social distancing and robotics to minimize contact while accelerating production and getting a steal on the rest of the world for reopening their facilities.

Business models: All of this change will strain the traditional “growth at all costs” value creation model prevalent in most XaaS businesses. Enterprise value may come at a slower burn for some or breathtakingly fast for those who can seize the market. Capital requirements will change. Interest rates will likely stay low, so CEOs could shift capital raises to self-sustaining revenue-based-financing models and more forgiving debt vehicles with government support. We are seeing further democratization of capital funding from the privileged few to a more socially concerned mainstream through crowdfunding and the lifting of regulations investments below $25 million. This opens up broader participation of the public and family offices in investments that can be directed to specific areas like underserved communities to encourage the entrepreneurs who are ready to participate in the emerging COVID-era market.

COVID has forced many ill-prepared businesses and processes to digitally transform at warp speed. Some did well: Zoom went from 10 million to 200 million daily active users without a hitch. Amazon has become the essential gateway to retail and saw a 26% year-over-year increase in Q1 2020 net sales, a staggering rate of $10,000 per second. Others struggled. Old COBOL-based government systems failed to meet the seismic shift in demand and the people suffered.

Stop for a moment and try to imagine life in this pandemic without the internet. The internet is the foundation of a successful shift to a COVID-era economy. XaaS powers the internet and a great deal of the services we’re now relying on to continue functioning economically and socially. It would be nice to talk about precise forecasts, but the truth is we just don’t know how the COVID-era economy will truly manifest. We only know that it won’t be what it was.

David McFarlane is a Board Member and Instructor for the MIT Enterprise Forum Cambridge and Venture Partner of VC firm Converge Venture Partners.

Interested in writing a guest post for VentureBeat?

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